This board is a composition workshop, like a writers' workshop: post your work with questions about style or vocabulary, comment on other people's work, post composition challenges on some topic or form, or just dazzle us with your inventive use of galliambics.

This man seems to be an equal of the gods.
This man, if it is right, appears to surpass the gods:
He who, sitting opposite you,
gazes at you and listens to your
sweet laughter again and again. Those things
from my misery snatch my senses: indeed,
the instant I look at you, Lesbia,
nothing of my voice is left in my mouth.

My tongue is tied, a thin flame of love
flows down through my limbs,
my ears ring with their own sound and
my eyes are covered with the twin night.

Catullus, leisure for you is troublesome:
In leisure do you rejoice and delight too much:
Leisure has, in the past, ruined kings and beautiful cities.

My tongue is tied, a thin flame of love flows down through my limbs, my ears ring with their own sound and my eyes are covered with the twin night.

â€˜tiedâ€™ is a pretty liberal translation (although I think correct)
I think â€˜tenuisâ€™ goes with â€˜artusâ€™, not flamma. His limbs have gone weak.
i'm not sure the flame is one 'of love'. Is it a flaming jealousy? i don't know...

I wonder about â€˜gemina luminaâ€™ as meaning â€˜eyesâ€™, but you may well be right. Iâ€™m not sure what â€˜twin lightsâ€™ he is referring to. Oh, I donâ€™t think it is â€˜twin nightâ€™, which would make even less sense.

re 'simul', it seems (to me) to indicate that Catullus is looking at her 'at the same time' as Mr Divine, but feels rather rotten because he cannot match Mr Divine's divinity. In fact, Catullus is so out of sorts that he can't speak a word to her.

re 'misero', there is a verb 'miserare'. If it is dative, which i would be happy to accept, then what is 'quod' doing there? Is it something like 'with the result that...'?

True, misero exists is a variant of the verb miseror, but as such it means 'to have pity', not 'to be sad'. The quod is a relative pronoun in this case, its antecedent the entire sentence above. So euripides's translation was quite accurate.

Some bits, I realize, were rather liberal; the "tongue tied", "the instant" etc. My aim was to capture the sense in more or less idiomatic English.

Regarding the "flame of love"; my dictionary relates that, along with meaning merely "flame", the word also had the sense of "the fire or glow of passion", hence "flame of love"

Sorry about the typo.

Re Kasper:

I thought that Catullus was referring to himself at the beginning, albeit in the 3rd person. That is, Catullus feels like Mr Divine when he's around Lesbia, though, he can't work up the courage to say anything and becomes a lovelorn mess. He lusts after her but can't act on it. I never thought he could be talking about someone else

I think this definitely puts a different spin on Catullus' poem and on Catullus. As rowdy as Catullus can seem, deep down he does seem to have a conservative strain where he longs for things like traditional marriage contracts or virtue. Being at leisure is also important for the poem where Catullus meets his firend's scortilla in the Forum. Rather than try to impress the Roman Quirites via arguments, he is trying to impress a little slut with tales of extravagance. O tempores, o mores!

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. ~Swift

Very nice poem!I'm sorry for unearthing this old thread, but it seems important.I've recently translated the Catullus 51 from Latin to Spanish. I'm a professional translator, i work in an enterprise doing live phone interpretation.I would like to post the poem here.